Juan Caguana wins the Guayaquil Biennale - "Expresiones" Magazine
29-Abril-2010

“My work appeals to the visceral”
A very good deployment, a curious intellectual scale, a pleasant and refreshing change of view for the entire public, and the requisite estrangement in order to generate a special ambience of ambiguity. These are – according to the Cuban artist, Saidel Brito – the characteristics which granted a work like “Picnic”, the first place and $20,000 dollars in the Álvaro Noboa International Biennale of Painting of Guayaquil, 2010.

Brito took second place and $10,000 dollars, but declared himself “satisfied”, given that he was beaten by one of his students from the Technological Institute of Art of Ecuador (ITAE), the young artist, Juan Caguana.

Third place, and a cash prize of $5,000 went to the United States artist, Kate Vrijmoet, with “Shotgun Accident”, according to information given “Expresiones” by Pablo Martínez, Director of the Luis A. Noboa Naranjo Museum.

The artist and the work

References to and ironic takes on the history of art, elements of current affairs, as well as a fascination for mimetics and the jungle characterize the latest prize-winning series by Juan Caguana, a 25-year-old Guayaquilian.

“Picnic”, the work selected by a national and international jury, is not above this “cocktail”. In regards to its composition, the artist explains, it winks at the inaugural Impressionist work, “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe”, by the celebrated French painter, Eduard Manet.

“The presence of the United States soldiers in the jungle countryside refers to a discourse regarding the hegemony of power,” points out Caguana, who has always liked to work in the terrain of color between figuration and the abstract that the jungle allows.

For Juan Caguana, who met us in sneakers and shorts in the workshop he shares with four friends and colleagues south of the city, the artist always proposes a story behind every painting. “But in the end, it isn’t something that you impose. It remains open to interpretation by the public”, he states.

Nevertheless, the young painter recognized that the series of four jungle paintings that he has carried out until now began with the bombardment of Angostura by Colombia, in which the FARC guerrilla, Raúl Reyes, died. “From then on, I was interested in the subject because we don’t know the Ecuadorian jungle, nor have we accorded it the value it deserves.”

According to the jury, the Guayaquilian garnered first prize because of “the angel” and “the soul” of his painting. It is a work of two months full-time labor.

“I always look for something more, today’s local painting is very cold, calculated. I don’t calculate everything that a work can give, I work in an intuitive manner. I don’t call on the cerebral, my work appeals to the visceral,” pointed out the artist, who studied for three years in the School of Beaux Artes, and is in his fourth at the ITAE. As a child, he began painting by drawing cartoons from television series and films like The Gentlemen of the Zodiac and Robocot.

In January, Manuel Rendón Seminario won the first prize of $30,000 from the Ministry of Culture with a painting in the same style as “Picnic”. In 2006, with a abstract of police camouflage and a discourse regarding the Fybeca assault, he earned second place in the July Salon.

He imagined that “Picnic” was going to be the penultimate work in the satirical series regarding the jungle, but now expects to elaborate four more. He knows it can be a trap to continue in the same vein and “in any case, it’s too exhausting”.
Alexander Garcia V.

Opinion
“He has this minute and angelically promiscuous relationship with the process of the work. A great tour de force. If I would have been a jury member, I would have given first place to Caguana.”

Saidel Brito, Professor of the ITAE
Second-place winner of the Biennale

Published by Expreso Newspaper, “Expresiones” Magazine, of Ecuador, 29 Apr